* Crossposted from: OS2             (Intl)  [ Tag: OS2  ]

-=> Also sprach John AngelicoF{at} <=-
 RT> We are discussing business marketing strategy here.
 RT>  If you bother to read business or management magazines
 RT>  ( eg: Harvard Business Review, WSJ, Forbes etc ), you will
 RT>  rapidly learn that giving away a product a la Netscape
 RT>  can be a powerful marketing strategy. Particularly since with
 RT>  the internet, the cost of giving away product is almost zero
 RT>  while doing this enables you to establish market share.
 RT>  Do you think that Marc Andreesen gives away Netscape Navigator
 RT>  free because he is a charity ?
 RT>  Think again.
 RT>  As Peter Drucker would say, " the theory of the business is
changing"..

 JA> Methinks those two sets of statements are internally inconsistent. It
 JA> is simply another way of buying market share... and once again the
 JA> TANSTAAFL Law has been forgotten (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free
 JA> Lunch!)

 No, I believe that you have simply not heard of " The law of _INCREASING_
 returns ". ( See any graduate level, modern post 1995 text book / review
 for information on this and it application to information technologies
 and information driven economies. ) It is widely believed that the economists
 ( mainly at Stanford ) who came up with this will be recieving a Nobel
 in the near future.

 Remember that many of the results of economics, game theory and strategic
 theory are NOT intuitively obvious.

... Autumn wind/ for me there are/ no gods, no Buddhas. Shiki 1867
--- Blue Wave/DOS v2.20